1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a menu interface and an implementing and an operating methods thereof. More particularly, the present invention is related to a graphical menu interface of a hand-held electronic device and an implementing and an operating methods thereof.
2. Description of Related Art
To keep up with the bustling pace of modern human life, a variety of hand-held electronic devices which are readily portable and compact have also flourished. Taking hand-held communication devices such as a PDA cellular phone or a smart phone for example, it is not only equipped with all the functions a traditional communication device has, but it also allows users to achieve purposes such as writing documents, receiving and sending e-mails, surfing the internet or communicating in instant message software through the Windows operating system built therein. In other words, the hand-held communication device not only can be used for making phone calls, but also has all kinds of diversified functions as a small personal computer. With advances in the wireless internet technology, use of these functions is no longer temporally and spatially confined and has gradually grown into a trend among the modern people who value efficiency and time management.
Most of the Windows operating systems built in the hand-held communication device use the user interfaces similar to those adopted in the personal computers. However, as limited by the volume of the hand-held communication device, if a function menu is to be displayed on a small screen, the size of the option itself needs to be reduced. Accordingly, users may very possibly not be able to quickly and clearly inspect the contents of the menu because the fonts and the icons are too small.
Further, since the Windows operating system provides numerous types of functions, which cannot all be displayed on the screen simultaneously, all the functions have to be arranged within the “start” function chart in a multi-tiered menu under a standby mode. For users not familiar with the Windows operating system, or for those who only use the hand-held communication device for the first time, it may take considerable time for them to memorize the positions of each of the functions in the menu. When users want to open a certain function, they not only have to know the position of the function in the menu, but also have to keep clicking on different tiers of the menu to arrive at the exact position of the function in the menu and thereby opening and operating the function. In contrast, if users do not know the position of the function in the menu, they may have to go through many trials to locate the function in the “start” function chart. It follows that these actions would take much unnecessary time for operation that can be otherwise saved.
Taking the common user interface of the Windows operating system for example, users not only need to memorize the positions of each of the functions in the menu, but also need to click on tier after tier in the menu to arrive at the corresponding option of the function they desire to open. All these situations cause inconvenience in use, and thus users cannot operate conveniently and rapidly.